Who will be next? That's the point we've all gotten to, it seems, on sexual misconduct charges made about powerful men pretty much across the spectrum of fame, journalism, and politics. Just today the news contained eight women accusing television journalist Charlie Rose of what can only be called workplace harassment and sexually predatory behavior. Also today, new accusations were made against New York Times political reporter Glenn Thrush, and a second woman accused Al Franken of groping her. That's merely one day's worth of news, and it follows months of such revelations going back to Harvey Weinstein, who was really the start of this cycle of accusations.
The only consistency among all these allegations is that powerful men -- only some of them, to be sure, but still far too many -- act like pigs, especially when they think they can get away with such swinish behavior. That really dates me, I know, because "pigs" immediately leaps to my mind from the phrase "male chauvinist pigs" which was often used in the 1960s and 1970s to describe patriarchic attitudes -- which were even more prevalent (and more blatant) back then. At some point, this phrase kind of fell out of favor among feminists, but perhaps it's time to start calling a pig a pig again?
Porcine semantics aside, though, at this point it certainly seems like we're in for a lot more weeks like the previous one, where there were so many accusations flying it was hard to keep them straight, at times. Personally, I've even stopped paying attention to the scandals hitting those in the world of entertainment (music, film, television, etc.). There are just too many of them, and I've never been all that big a fan of many of the men accused (although George Takei certainly made an impression, due to me being a longtime Star Trek fan). But the other real reason I've started ignoring the entertainer scandals is that I write about and concentrate on politics and journalism much more than any sports icon or rap star or television personality. This is why I mentioned Charlie Rose, Glenn Thrush, and Al Franken but failed to mention any of the Hollywood idols also currently (and recently) put on the hot seat.
Even limiting the focus to journalism and politics still provides a wide array of sexual misconduct accusations, though. There was the pig sty known as Fox News, for instance. The fall of Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly should have been a wake-up call but kind of got lost in political tribalism -- those on the right either ignored it or defended Fox and O'Reilly, and those on the left were so caught up in the schadenfreude that they failed to consider whether they had any pigs within their own ranks of favorite journalists. Then came the fall of Mark Halperin, but few rose to defend him (perhaps because he more than anyone else was the absolute personification of the inside-the-Beltway cocktail party crowd's group-think conventional-wisdom attitudes, which has few actual fans outside of Washington).
Charlie Rose's downfall, however, is going to hit liberals a bit harder. Rose seems to be everywhere on television, from appearing on CBS at 8:00 in the morning to the Charlie Rose show, which airs in my PBS market at midnight. Rose was brought in to CBS in a valiant effort to fight back against the fluffiness of most morning news shows, showing that CBS had a commitment to hard reporting over feel-good nonsense. Rose's self-titled PBS show was a mixture of interviews with journalists, politicians, authors, celebrities, and artists. I personally always found Rose more than a little pompous and a wee bit too willing to parrot political slogans without digging in to the truth or falsehood of such slogans, but maybe that's just me. Rose at least interviewed people for 20 minutes or more on his show, and the "long-format interview" has almost completely disappeared from any other forum on television (for instance, 20-minute-long interviews used to be the bedrock of the Sunday morning political shows, but the interviews have gotten shorter and shorter until now they are no more than the same type of quickie, drive-by interview that cable news is notorious for -- you get less than five minutes to make your point, and that's it, gotta move on to yet another commercial break). So Rose's PBS show was usually worth watching for the sole reason that you got more than just a few soundbites out of whomever was sitting across the table from Charlie.
As I write this, there has been no corporate reaction yet. Charlie was noticeably absent from CBS this morning, because both he and the network had to have known what the Washington Post was going to report this morning. But at this point it seems doubtful that Rose will be on the air much longer, either on CBS or on PBS. The allegations made against him are so severe -- harassing women who worked for him, walking around naked after a shower in front of them as if it were no big deal, and what can only be described as continuing predatory behavior -- that at this point in time it seems impossible for Rose to recover. He'll likely just decide to retire (he is in his 70s, after all, so this was going to happen sooner or later anyway).
Turning to the political world, the second accusation made against Al Franken may be the final nail in his political coffin. This is saddening for many Democrats to admit, but as I said last week if they're going to take the moral high road then Franken may be required to sacrifice himself to continue the purity of the Democratic position. If you're going to set the standard of zero tolerance, then you've got to apply that same standard to one of your own, in other words, in order not to be seen as total hypocrites. Introduction of "gray area explanations" merely weakens your overall cause, obviously.
Personally, what I find depressing about the current atmosphere -- that of "we've reached a turning point" on sexual accusations -- is that we've been here so many times before. Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas was supposed to be such a turning point. Bill Clinton fought back, so it was seen as less of a turning point. But since Clinton's been president, it'd be hard to even tally up how many politicians have been disgraced and run out of office over sexual misconduct. Anthony Weiner's wiener was actually a significant factor in the 2016 presidential election, just to give one example. There are far too many others to even fully list: Larry Craig, Elliot Spitzer, Newt Gingrich, Robert Livingston, Gary Condit, Strom Thurmond, Mark Foley, David Vitter, John Edwards, Herman Cain, Dennis Hastert... the list just goes on and on. And that is not even close to being a complete list, even for the past few decades. It also doesn't even mention our current president, who still has yet to face the music to over a dozen women who have made sexual accusations against him (and were not taken as seriously even a year ago as what we're seeing now).
Of course, not all of those scandals involved sexually predatory behavior, or workplace harassment, or child molestation. Some were just run-of-the-mill affairs with adults the politician didn't happen to be married to at the time. But even winnowing down the list to serious sexual misbehavior (conduct that is clearly illegal, in other words), there are still a lot of names to choose from. Each time we were told that it would be a real turning point in public attitude, but each time as the story faded so did the public outrage.
This time feels different, I will admit. This time around the sheer volume and the breadth of public personalities accused seems to show a real rising tide of public opinion to treat such things differently in the future. Also the swiftness of the consequences seems to be different. Just to use one example, everyone knew that Bill O'Reilly was disgusting and predatory a full decade before he was forced off the air. There were transcripts of phone calls he made (the "loofah/falafel tapes") which left no doubt as to what a pig O'Reilly truly was. But he kept his job for another decade, and Fox News continued to pay out millions of dollars in settlements to cover up his piggishness. Now, though, he is no longer on the air even though his show was the highest-rated on cable television. That is a monumental shift in consequences. I have no idea how soon Charlie Rose will disappear from my television screen, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least to hear that, after having a couple hours to think it over, PBS and CBS have decided to pull the plug on him starting today.
I don't really have any sweeping conclusions to offer on the current situation, I have to confess. Other than to express a certain numbness about the volume of accusations that shows no signs of abating. I'm not the only one, either -- even just tracking the Roy Moore story, there was a big splash when the first four accusers hit the news, and then a further cycle of outrage after the Gloria Allred press conference with the fifth accuser. But since then, four other women have come forward but have received much less attention. It's like the situation with Bill Cosby -- at some point, the only really newsworthy part of the story was the total number of accusers ("the number of women making such accusations against Cosby hit X today...").
Which is why, at this point, the only question we may all be asking for months and months to come is: "Who will be next on the chopping block?" Which icon of politics, journalism, or entertainment will be the next to face public shaming for past misbehavior? And at this point, it really could be anyone. We're fast approaching the point -- if we're not already there -- where none of these accusations is going to generate any surprise. Loathing, shame, outrage, disgust, and denunciation -- all of those will be felt for each and every new name added to the list. But little, if any, surprise. The one consistent aspect to the ongoing scandalpalooza is that powerful men everywhere are being exposed for who they truly are. Not just members of your own political "tribe," not just entertainers you love or hate, not just sleazy television executives and personalities, but people you used to respect and cheer for. The only common denominator is that this tidal wave of scandal is going to hit everywhere -- right, left, and center -- and that we have in no way reached the crest of that wave.
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
